E-Commerce refers to electronic commercial transactions that are done over the internet and the web. E-commerce websites were originally used as marketing platforms for companies where organization’s products and services would be posted for visitors to view. Today, an e-commerce website has multiple functionalities where services are requested and delivered almost at the time (Andam, 2014). The internet has had significant contribution to e-commerce with several features being attributed to its success.
Firstly, e-commerce websites have been improved customer shopping habits where they can shop from the comfort of their homes (Hernández, Jiménez & Martín, 2010). Shopping catalogues have provided sophisticated online ordering and order-tracking capabilities for the customer with express checkout options. Visitors have found it convenient that shopping catalogues have kept a real-time inventory management reducing customer frustrations when a customer finds the target product to be out of stock after going through a lengthy ordering process. Also, provision of credible online payment options has improved sales on the websites. In most cases, customers opt to pay via their credit cards. All the company needs is a merchant account that can be used for the transaction through a real-time payment gateway. Essentially, the sites have been created using reliable security plugins with effective SSL certificates and ultimate PCI compliance ensuring secure payment gateways for the customers.
Besides, the e-commerce websites provide contact forms from where the customers can seek assistance from the support team. Consultancy in case of complaints is also enhanced through the forms that provide instant replies through the same IP address. Such forms include the contact form 7 that has CAPTCHA and spam filtering. Other forms require that a visitor posts an email address that can help refer back to him for feedback on queries. The email address can be used to send newsletters informing the visitor of any news, promotions or offers the company could be offering. Customer support services have been enabled via a live chat button such as the Zopim live chat that has instant reply capabilities via the IP address used in contacting the support team.
Driven by the desire of companies to analyze the success of their e-commerce website, traffic monitoring features were included in e-commerce websites (Faro, Giordano & Spampinato, 2011). WordPress provides a plugin such as Visitors Traffic Real-Time Statistics that keeps track of the number of real-time users on the website. Further statistics on the visitor’s geolocation is also provided. Such information helps the company recover geographic locations that are viable for the marketing of its products. The visitors time on the site (stickiness) is monitored. The plugins store a record of the pages that were visited. The information gathered can be used to analyze the type of products that the customer was looking for. Besides, the websites have implemented sophisticated plugins that prompt a visitor leaving the page to leave information such as rating the standards of the service delivered to him and leaving feedback on how the company can improve its service delivery and so on.
Further, most e-commerce websites have adopted highly effective content management systems that have made it easier for users to manage content in the database. Its effectiveness is evident since users with little knowledge in programming can make use of the content management system via its content management application interface.
In summary, e-commerce has gone a mile ahead, thanks to the internet that has enabled the implementation of sophisticated features that has made online shopping and marketing a reality (Colla, & Lapoule, 2012). Essentially, innovative strategies will push the advent of more features and e-commerce will remain the backbone and a key source of revenue for most companies.
References
Andam, Z. R. (2014). e-Commerce and e-Business.
Colla, E., & Lapoule, P. (2012). E-commerce: exploring the critical success factors. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 40(11), 842-864.
Faro, A., Giordano, D., & Spampinato, C. (2011). Integrating location tracking, traffic monitoring and semantics in a layered ITS architecture. IET intelligent transport systems, 5(3), 197-206.
Hernández, B., Jiménez, J., & Martín, M. J. (2010). Customer behavior in electronic commerce: The moderating effect of e-purchasing experience. Journal of business research, 63(9), 964-971.
